I have a confession. I’ve become that person. I recently got my hands on the 5100 Laser 1D Wireless Barcode Scanner, and I’m officially obsessed. My wife and I have started increasing our book collection, so keeping track of books that we have is starting to get a bit tedious. Spreadsheets, handwritten lists, trying to type in those ridiculously long ISBNs… it was annoying.

Enter the barcode scanner.

You may have a pre-conceived notion that you need tons of super custom software to operate a barcode scanner but this barcode scanner acts just like a keyboard. You plug in the little USB receiver, scan a barcode, and BAM, the numbers appear whenever your text cursor is. Absolutely no required vendor software or drivers needed.

Why I love it

• Fast: No more painstakingly typing out ISBNs.
• Accurate: Typos are a thing of the past. The scanner captures the information perfectly every time as long as you hear it beep.
• Spreadsheets: This thing makes updating a spreadsheet of ISBNs an absolute breeze.
• Organization: I can finally keep track of which books I’ve loaned out, which ones I want to buy, and which ones are hiding in that stack in the corner.

Personally, I’ve been using librarything.com to track my budding book collection, but there are a few other alternatives like libib.com, CLZ and GoodReads. And I’m considering using this for more use-cases, like board games, electronics, etc.

What do you think? Was this a waste of money or do you think it’s a good idea?